Twilight
by littorella
Summary: Typical case with almost typical people. Somehow, Hisoka looks at himself differently and the things he care for as a result.
1. Prologue

AN: This story is somewhat of a misguided and heavy handed attempt. Forgive me, I was only 13 when I wrote this.

* * *

**Prologue**

There are many roads. Roads in life, roads in decisions, roads in death. It never mattered which ones were taken, only the path itself. After all, where would anyone be without roads?

Such was the case when Kurosaki Hisoka found himself lying in a hospital bed. He hadn't done anything to go arrive there, someone simply pushed him and he found himself at a dead end. Literally. Everyday he wished that he could find the way out, choices that were suppose to appear when others disappeared.

And each day he only found fewer roads than the day before.

Hisoka stared out at sunset from his bed, the first sunset each day scene by human eyes. Everyday he watched the ball of fire bury itself into the greedy earth. There was never a difference, rain or shine. And one day, he thought to himself, he would follow the sun into the earth.

The setting sun and twilight was decidedly his favorite time of day. Not because of the sleep it brought on, or the coming requiem of night. He always told himself it would finally bring an end to the pain and loneliness and desperation.

People in the twilight were simply lost forever—they followed the last of the sun brothers as he descended into hell and did not turn back in remose.

And no turning back was pretty much how he had felt. The hopelessness had made him want to hit his head against the walls, but there was a road hidden in the thick plants, undisturbed by the numerous people who looked past oblivious. Just as he hadn't chosen his current road, Hisoka didn't choose to go down this one either.

There was simply no other way.

Maybe there were a few, but he went down it still. Perhaps he unconsciously chose it, but he didn't like to look at it that way. No matter the road, the outcome what was he considered favorable. It wasn't everyday that one could become shinigami.

He thought about his short life and everything that he wouldn't be able to accomplish. Like growing up, going to college, living. But it didn't matter much anymore. After the initial shock of his death, it wasn't that bad anymore. Yet the dull ache in him still hurt every time he looked at the things he would never do.

It hurt more than that.

It hurt so much he wanted to cry.

He just couldn't somehow. It would be letting himself down if he did. So it stayed inside, forgotten, put away, never to be touched.

And like all emotions shut up, it bidded its time…

…then began to eat its way from the inside-out.


	2. Ivory

Yay, I actually wrote some. Even I amaze myself sometimes.

disclaimer: Yami no Matsuei and it's characters do not belong to me. Don't sue, I'm broke. YAy for you. Just so you know, there will be no more disclaimers because they take up space unnecessarily.

**Twilight**  
_by clover calerica_

**Chapter 1**

The curtains parted, the heavy cloth wrinkled under his death grip. He stared at the light shadow of him face on the cold glass. Morning outside his window wasn't beautiful as people said it was—it was just empty, devoid of colors.

Quickly getting dressed, Hisoka tried to forget the previous week. It was all so strange, especially knowing that you could almost get dismembered just not die. The sun was brightly shinning once again. He started to wonder if it would ever rain in Meifu.

The Shokan division of EnMaCho wasn't exactly peaceful each morning. Seeing Watari begging Tatsumi for research grants and Tsuzuki happily munching on donuts, Hisoka closed his eyes and sighed. It took getting used to. 

Picking up the file on his next case, Hisoka read quickly. His eyes scanned over the major words. Something about a woman who was overdue in death. It seemed almost typical now, most cases were either disappearances not ending up in Meifu or people who were overdue. 

"Are you ready to go?"

Hisoka's head jerked up. Tsuzuki stared him intently, waiting for a reply. He never received one. Hisoka simply stood up and started walking. 

_ _ _ _  


"Hisoka! Can we go buy something to eat?" 

He fixed his gaze on his partner's bright smile and muttered a simple no. They were wasting time as it is walking nowhere. "Please Tsuzuki, I promise, if we can finish this before this day ends, I'll take you to dinner." It was a simple excuse to not let the other bother him anymore. He could feel a headache coming already. 

"Really?" Never had Tsuzuki seen Hisoka so…distracted. But a promise was a promise and it certainly looked good to him. 

Their investigating and blindly asking around lead them to an old apartment complex with rusting white paint and musty stairs. Like saw dust whispered over wine. It had a slow feel to it, the washed out green doors felt like something from an old photograph, still and aged. 

From the information they had gathered, the woman lived on the second floor. Climbing up the stairs felt so very strange to Hisoka. It was as if every single step upwards, he was becoming more and more dizzy, but when he reached the top step his head cleared immediately but his empathy was no longer sensing much of anything. 

Tsuzuki had to help him on the way up—he had almost fallen down. It was embarrassing but also reassuring that he at least had someone to help him when he was not feeling well. They found the door they were looking for after circling the floor several times. There was no distinct order of the numbers, just random placement—it gave the place a maze like feel about it. 

Knocking softly on the door, Hisoka wondered at what he should say to the one who opened the door. "Excuse me, but you're suppose to be dead" didn't seem particularly right. After some shuffling behind the faded green door, the locks each clicked and a small head peeked through at him. 

With a bundle of frizzy red hair, the little girl stared up at him. 

"Are you looking for okaasan?" the tiny voice asked as the girl blinked, "because she's not home right now and I'm not suppose to let strangers in." 

Tsuzuki knelt down to talk to the little girl at eye level. "When will she be home?" He added one of his especially kind smiles to encourage the girl to not be afraid, which she clearly was. Hisoka's empathy could sense her fear towards them. 

"Okaasan said I'm not suppose to talk to strangers either." 

Hisoka rolled his eyes. It wasn't like they didn't know where she lived, and a few other things about her—children were so irrational. Then again, he shouldn't expect a little kid think critically like that. His thoughts were interrupted as a second face pushed through the crack in the door above the little girl. 

"Who are you?"

"We're…uh…social services…we're looking for your mother," Tsuzuki stammered. Trust Tsuzuki to make up something on the spot.

There was something about these children that disturbed Hisoka. One thing was that he couldn't use his empathy—it felt like whenever he tried to read Tatsumi. The other was just the aura they projected, or rather didn't project, like someone shut off their life force.

"You can come back later at night, after eight. She should be home then," the boy said defiantly then slammed the door in Tsuzuki's face.

"Charming, isn't he?"

Hisoka shrugged. "There's something abnormal about that kid. He's knows a whole lot more than he needs to," he said as he played with the seams of his coat sleeve. The string suddenly became so interesting.

"I can't help but get the sinking feeling we can't just ask this lady to come with us," Tsuzuki said with a dejected sigh. He always did have problems when it came to overdue people. 

"But it's what's right, ne? Tsuzuki?" Hisoka said reassuringly as he placed a hand on his partner's shoulder—which turned out quite awkward since Tsuzuki was so much taller than him. 

The purple-eyed shinigami smiled in return. "Say Hisoka, didn't you say you were going to take me to dinner?" 

Hisoka stared.

_ _ _

The apartment complex seemed even more of a dump in the dark. The broken blinds in the windows could be seen clearly as the yellow lights inside lit up one by one. Hisoka thought about how he was going to climb the stairs this time. 

It was dark, and the dizziness was even worse. Tsuzuki had to half-carry him on the last few steps. The stairs were definitely a major problem—he could feel the magical residue lingering about playing with his senses. 

They stood once again in front of the green door staring at the rusting door number after some confusion. You see, there were no working lights in the hallways. This time, Tsuzuki knocked softly in order to not disturb the other tenants. 

The woman who opened the door was a timid looking little lady barely taller than Hisoka. Her messy hair and disastrous state of dress pointed to the obvious trouble she had been having with her three children. Latched onto the woman was a child no older than two. 

"I'm sorry to bother you, but are you KazakiYumiko?"

The lady blinked and nodded while keeping the door open with her foot and slightly rocking the little girl. "You must be the social worker my son told me about," she said with a weak smile, but there was panic in her tone. Hisoka could feel her fear screaming out at his empathy and strengthened his shields. 

"Please come in, I apologize for the state of this place. I wasn't expecting company." Yumiko set the little girl down into her lap as she sat down on the sofa's tattered cloth. 

Tsuzuki smiled as he took the chair beside her, which left Hisoka to sit beside Yumiko. The inside of the apartment was even worse than the outside. Discolored walls and grungy carpet with mismatching furniture gave it a cheap dirty feel. 

Yumiko looked at Hisoka strangely as he sat down. "Aren't you a bit young to be working?"

Honestly, Hisoka hadn't thought about that yet, but quickly replied, "I'm doing a job shadowing program for school." He tried to sound as friendly as possible but it somehow seemed insincere to himself. 

It was the boy that really caught Hisoka's attention. While Tsuzuki and Yumiko were chattering away about something, he spotted the boy spying on them from the doorway of the bedroom. As soon as the boy realized he had been uncovered, he ducked away. Hisoka didn't doubt he was standing there listening. 

"Excuse me Kazaki-san, could I speak with your children?" Hisoka inquired. He just had to go talk to that kid—there was no doubt the kid was behind the dizzy spells on the stairs. 

"Sure." She looked as if she was going to ask why, but didn't. 

Hisoka passed through the doorway into a crowded room with a bunk bed, a crib, and another bed all pressed against the bleached walls leaving the middle space free where the two children were playing. They were playing with simple dolls and cars like the worn out toys were the treasures of make believe. 

The boy turned up and frowned at Hisoka. His face contorted to one displaying hatred and fury, yet he was still a still blank space in Hisoka's empathy. 

"Hello, my name is Kurosaki Hisoka." The boy glared at him. "I know you did something to the staircase outside." 

"I know who you are. You're a Shinigami." 

This kid knew. How the heck did he know? 

"You're here to take okaasan away," he said bluntly, stating the obvious. The boy looked pointedly at Hisoka, who was lost for words. "I know magic, and I can defeat you, so don't take even try to take her." His childish reasoning and defiance would have made Hisoka smile if it hadn't been the current situation. 

"People all die sometime," Hisoka started, trying to rationale with the child, "it isn't good if they don't—" 

"NO!" 

Silence.

"NO!" he shouted again. "It isn't, because this is my mother. And you can't take her away from me. Wouldn't you like for someone to take your mother away?!" 

There was no response. 

Hisoka had never really loved his mother. She was just there, part of the family that locked their demon child away to be forgotten. These children obviously needed their mother, if she were to die—they would all have to go to orphanages. Normally, this kind of thing wouldn't bother Hisoka, but this time—these children would be like him, unloved and forced to grow up. 

Yet this was the right thing to do. Yumiko would eventually die—these children couldn't prevent everything. Some people were destined to die, and Yumiko just happened to be one of them. The world wasn't fair in its distribution of roads to people, there was only one road for Yumiko—the road into the twilight.

_Twilight is where you are lost. _

"Your feelings don't matter. It's the principle of it, she has to come with us," he said, voice iced over. The little girl who had answered the door early glanced up just then as if she had missed the entire argument except that one line. The ragged doll hung limp at her fingers.

_There is no turning back._

Her huge innocent eyes, filled with the stuff dreams were made of, focused on Hisoka. "Why does Kurosaki-san want to take away okaasan?" She stared at him searching for something in that unnerving manner that made people shiver.

Instantly, Hisoka knew she was really the one who had caused him trouble around the building. She kept looking intently at him, and he found himself unable to look away from her hypnotizing brown eyes.

"Kiri-chan, you're going to have to get him now."

Before the words could register in Hisoka's mind, all sense of feeling shut off and he felt himself falling out of consciousness. The floor faded as he saw it coming closer to him face.


	3. 5 AM

I know it's going to get confusing...just don't freak out on me. It will make sense as soon as I eat non-lazy pills and write the rest of it. Sorry for the shortness and horrible spacing, I didn't want to spend any more time screwing with the html Frontpage did than I had to and it was sorta passable.

**Twilight  
**_by calerica_

**Chapter 2**

Wasting away.

That was all he could think about.

People, things, dreams, words.

Everyone spent his or her entire lives preparing for the next big thing in life. Living inside of your mother prepared you for birth. Birth prepared you for the unfair life outside. You first years prepared you for school. School prepared you for living on your own. Living on your own prepared you for old age. And old age prepared you for…

But in the ultimate end, everything died.

It all simply wasted away into nothing.

He felt numb, like there was no control over his limbs. There wasn't any ground below his feet. In fact, he couldn't even see his own hands. Hisoka would have thought himself blind if it hadn't been for the moving shadows on the ground.

The shadows were distinctly different than the darkness around him. It remotely resembled some thick syrupy liquid wavering in complete dimness. No matter what he told himself, Hisoka couldn't bring himself to touch it. The waves gave that dissimilar and bothersome buzz to his empathy.

If he touched it, he was almost certain he would drown.

After all, you never really needed water to drown—there were more dangerous things to smother you.

"Watashi…"

Hisoka spun around. Not literally, he couldn't do that, but rather he wanted to spin around and somehow did. The little red haired girl glanced up at him shyly—the brown of her eyes held a shallow guilt from what he could feel. Facial expressions always failed Hisoka when it came down to it—and from what he felt, he was soon to have no empathy to rely on at all.

"Gomen nasai Kurosaki-san," her voice trailed as she stared at her feet.

"I didn't mean to, but Akito told me to. And he is always right, isn't he?"

What bothered Hisoka about the situation wasn't that he was stuck in the middle of nowhere, but the fact that a confused little girl controlled that nowhere. She was rambling on about things he certainly didn't care much about at the moment.

With her big eyes, she gave him a pointed look.

"You will forgive me right?"

Hisoka found no words.

"I just can't let you take away okaasan."

As if habitual, she looked down at her feet again. The murky shadow gathered at her feet as if comforting her. Whatever power this was, Hisoka reminded himself to go research if he ever got out, it was certainly something they needed to keep in check.

Without warning, the ground seemed to begin encasing him. Not that he could see it, but there the girl was disappearing from feet up like something was covering her up. But she didn't even look surprised so Hisoka reasoned that it was himself who was the one being covered.

_ _ _

It was questionable whether Hisoka really "woke up" or not. As far as he was concerned, he blacked out, spent some time in lala land, and was now standing on the Tokyo Tower having a conversation with someone. He couldn't define who that someone was or what they had been talking about. After all, he had just opened his eyes and found himself there.

He turned to the girl who was speaking to him. She had suddenly stopped. Hisoka took a moment to study her. Her bright red hair was the first distinctive thing he saw. Some reasoning told him that this must be a grown up version of the little girl. Also, he couldn't use his empathy on her either.

This girl was different though, definitely depression. The school uniform looked overly large on her when she slouched. Her arms rested on the railing with her chin sitting on them. He couldn't tell if she was waiting for him to speak or waiting for herself.

"Could you say that again? The wind was blowing," he said thinking about how he could figure out what was really going on without offending her.

"She left me at the bottom," she whispered, "I got so mad when she didn't come back down then went home. There was this huge crowd on the street below, but I was so angry I didn't even go look."

The words caught up in her throat and wouldn't come out. She looked as if she was struggling not to cry.

"When I got home, I saw it on the news. Someone jumping from the Tokyo Tower—it seems like that's all the good this tower does. Then all these people called me saying they were sorry. It felt so awful because I knew why it happened. My mother was never good enough for herself, and neither was I. I was failing school and she wanted both of us to be successful, to actually be able to afford a real apartment. None of it was happening, so she…she wanted to be free."

The girl laid her head down on the rail and sighed. Her school uniform was getting wrinkled from being pressed against the cold metal. The metal was damp from the previous evening and Hisoka judged it to be sometime in the morning.

"Please, I don't think I can do this any longer. Please help me. I want to be free like her."

He wondered at how he could have winded up here. It seemed much too strange—just waking up and having a suicide attempt thrown in your face. 

Hisoka looked at her uncertainly. He was a shinigami, he basically killed people so it wasn't that matter. But he knew in some part of him that she didn't actually want to die. Some people have strange minds; he'd give almost anything to be alive. If she wanted to jump off the tower, what the heck was he supposed to do for her?

Save her?

Not likely.

The girl closed her eyes and shuddered against the metal rail she leaned on.

"I…I don't have enough courage to kill myself. Please push me off, that way I can at least measure up to my mother. She had enough courage to die, and I don't have enough to live."

Her words were starting to run circles in Hisoka's mind—they were definitely not making any sense.

"I can't do that. If you don't have enough courage to die, that must mean you want to live," he said the first thing in his mind. It didn't make much sense to him either, but there was nothing else that fit. "You have problems, but could you tell me what am I doing here?" sounded incredibly rude.

She stared out into space for a minute. "I'm so weak, but I have the courage to live my useless life. I'm a waste on society, yet I can't find it in me to save everyone the trouble and kill myself. I tried to let my anger out but only ended up cutting my arms. That made even more trouble for everyone. I'm just that worthless."

"Why was I even born if I can't give anything to the world?" The girl's hands were turning white from gripping the bars so hard. If she held them any harder, her hands would have began to bleed.

"Maybe you were born to make someone else happy."

She sighed into the thin fabric of her uniform, "Then I probably don't have a reason for being alive. It's all my mother's fault for not having an abortion. Does that make me selfish? To want to live while condemning her?"

"I don't know," Hisoka answered, utterly confused.

Obviously unsatisfied with the answer, she asked, "Does it make you selfish to be dead and kill others?"

The question caught him off guard and made him rethink the bits and pieces of the situation again.

"That isn't a fair question."

Her face twisted into a bitter smile that stayed for a long time as she thought about his almost careless words.

"Then I must be the most selfish being alive."

He could have sworn the brown of her eyes flashed violet.

She shook her head then took a look down at the busy ground below. "You know, you never realize how tall this thing is until you're standing on it."

Silently, she leaned over the railing and gazed down below.

Then without another word, dipped into the air below with one hand still hanging on. Her entire body shivered against the morning chill. Hisoka rushed over to grab her hand, in some strange way he thought he could save this stranger. Instead, he felt his heart stop when her fingers barely brushed his and let go.

He didn't know why, but he found himself yelling Tsuzuki's name while trying to reach her with his hand outstretched.

It seemed like eternity watching her fall.

_ _ _

"Kurosaki-kun?"

A pair of concerned eyes stared at him from behind glasses when Hisoka turned around. Tatsumi gave him a look that froze him to the spot.

There was just that look in Tatsumi that made Hisoka's heart sink.

"Is there something wrong?"

The shadowed eyes on the shinigami yielded no answers. Empathy was out of the questions, there was absolutely nothing coming from him. Yet through the coldness, Hisoka could feel a pain so excruciating not even Tatsumi's shields could conceal.

"I don't think either of us are ready to discuss it." That was all he said—nothing less nothing more, just enough to kill Hisoka's curiosity.

Tatsumi left the blank infirmary room directly after he made sure Hisoka was fully conscious and feeling fine. The bed felt like a wax wall slowly enveloping him from below. Worried, Hisoka slipped outside quietly but stopped right before the door when he heard Watari speaking.

"I know this is hard on you. It's hard on all of us, but you can't expect him to want to remember what happened. You're not the only one Tsuzuki-san meant something to."

'That's not it. I feel angry that he won't remember it. It's like he's dishonoring the memory of…"

His green eyes widened at this. At this moment Hisoka pushed the door open in a hurry and urgently asked, "What happened? What happened to Tsuzuki?"

No one answered him. They were too stunned at his outburst.

"You have to tell me. I have to know. Where is he?"

Watari was fidgeting with the buttons of his lab coat uncomfortably and Tatsumi had put on the emotionless expression again. Everyone else quickly left the room in a rush of hastened murmurs.

"Why won't you tell me?!" Hisoka looked desperately at Tatsumi. Obviously something major had gone wrong. Tsuzuki—he didn't want to think about what could have happened.

"You will be receiving a new partner tomorrow."

"No. Please say what I'm thinking is too outrageous. He's just taking a break right?"

This time there was simply silence. He felt his heart tighten again like someone had pulled too hard on its strings—like someone he had his heartstrings tied around was trying to rip them.

He didn't know how the time passed until the next day. Hisoka ate nothing and slept none, all the hypothetical what if's were running through his head. When his new partner showed up, he almost had a heart attack.

"Ohayo Kurosaki-san!" A bright cheerful voice called out to him.

He could have sworn the world hated him. The same big brown eyes stared at him with the same red hair framing them. This time she was a bit older than the girl who fell off the tower but he could see the exact same face that looked at him pleading for him to push her. His empathy told him she was another blank spot.

"Why are you stalking me?"

She blinked in surprise. "I've never met you before. How can I be stalking you? You must not be in a good mood today; do you want to go out for some food? I absolutely love sweet things."

Hisoka shook his head, he just couldn't stop referring everything to Tsuzuki.

And they say stalkers aren't as scary as imagined.

"Who are you?" He didn't care if he sounded overly insensitive but right then he could have cared less how the girl felt.

She blinked several times again. "Oh! I get it—Tatsumi-san never introduced me! I'm Kazaki Kiri." She extended a hand and smiled brightly.

Hisoka immediately shrunk away from her hand and ended up with a hurt expression targeted towards him. It was the girl, the little red head that kept him prisoner. She dropped her hand to her side and sighed.

"Why don't you like me? We've never even met."

"What have you done with Tsuzuki?" He asked suddenly out of the blue. The accusation started the girl and eyes jerked to focus on his. There was the sinking suspicion this Kiri had something to do with it. Nobody else was telling him anything.

From that, she turned her attention absently to the window and looked outside. "It's a beautiful morning, isn't it?"

"Don't change the subject on me Kazaki-san."

The lack of sleep and extra thinking from the previous day taxed his patience already. Playing duck around the truth was definitely not helping his already short fuse. Hisoka looked at her intently waiting for his answer.

Kiri smiled softly then turned her brown eyes on him. "I really don't know."

"Then how come he just disappeared?"

"Things we love don't disappear Kurosaki-san. Someone always takes them away. Isn't that true?" she asked as if nothing was wrong. The entire anti-climatic feel of it drove Hisoka crazy.

"Why can't you just answer me? Why do you keep saying these stupid things that don't make a bit of sense?"

She remained extremely calm as he raised his voice.

"Why not?"

Hisoka stared—he was feeling like he did this way too often. The stupidity of this was making him want to just burst out laughing. "Because I am so confused. That's why."

"Okay then!" She said in her annoyingly cheerful manner as she latched on to his arm and pulled him toward the door. "You have to give me a tour. Can't have your partner getting lost now can you?"

He kept thinking about what Tsuzuki would do in this situation. He would be nice and pretend everything was all right. But that wasn't something Hisoka was about to do anytime soon.

The next few days were completely surreal. Kiri herself was surreal. She kept reminding Hisoka of Tsuzuki with every little thing she said and did. The loneliness was eating him away—it was like he had given away something that was vital to his connection to everything.

He had come to only one conclusion. He was hopeless dependent on Tsuzuki and would soon go crazy if he couldn't find him. Kiri shared all together too many characteristics with Tsuzuki but it just wasn't the same, he couldn't enjoy her cheerfulness. It was merely annoying.

If he had thought the first days awful, the next were even worse.

Not only had the loss of Tsuzuki been consuming him, but every time he was around, the other shinigami twitched. Yet no one would tell him what was wrong. They simply avoided him like the plague. Practically no one spoke to him—only the unwanted attentive words of his new partner.

Two weeks later of what seemed to be eternity, Hisoka stared out the twilight outside his window from bed and wondered where Tsuzuki was. His heart hurt worse than the jealousy he felt for the living. 

Even before the sun fully set, Hisoka drifted to sleep.

He found himself dreaming about the twilight outside. He felt himself set with the sun.

When he woke up the next morning, Hisoka would realize he was no longer in his bed at home. 


	4. Sunday

YAy, part 3, YAy. I started to rewrite this but got too lazy...Thanks to Imbrii for beta-ing my nonsensical words stringed together. Finally got the format fixed [screw microsoft], no more stupid spacing. I know nobody has enough guts to sue, but for fanfiction tradition's sake: Yami no Matsuei is property of Matsushita Yoko, Hana to Yume, and other peep-holes. YAy for them.

**Twilight  
**_by calerica_

**Chapter 3**

  
  
"How can she know?"  
  
Simply black.  
  
Falling.  
  
Falling endlessly.  
  
It must be a dream then.  
  
"Children hear things, even things unsaid."  
  
  
_ _ _   
  
  
  
Awakening was not something Hisoka was distinctly fond of. A thousand shivers across the mind as he woke once again. There was a fuzzy feeling over his empathy as if someone had placed a cloth over him, dampening all the senses.   
  
It had to have been a dream; normal people didn't wake up and fall asleep that often.  
  
Hisoka found himself standing in the middle of the same room he had first blacked out in. The beds were arranged differently with colorful blankets neatly tucked in. There were two beds, both in different corners of the room. Since when did they have time to move the beds? Hadn't there been a crib? Maybe he had been gone for longer than he had imagined. What would Tsuzuki say? Where was Tsuzuki?  
  
Hisoka found himself listening to a simple melody, piano. Not right, it was something more synthetic in sound. He wondered out of the bedroom cautiously and saw the source of the noise. A little boy was sitting on the floor beside the couch playing what was his own version of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. His head bent down, looking at the keys of the keyboard in concentration.  
  
A blue jacket covered the boy-it seemed a few sized too large, but his neat brown hair still made its appearance. Hisoka stared at the keyboard's glaring white keys, the complicated buttons, and five octaves; it had to have been pretty expensive.  
  
"I'm home!" a cheerful voice was heard from the door.   
  
The Yumiko he saw was entirely different from the conservative person he had met earlier. Her dark hair with green on the tips was bound up tightly, and she was adorned with sunglasses, various piercings, and a lot of leather.   
  
Since she walked past him to get to the refrigerator without noticing a thing, Hisoka assumed that he was just an outside observer. Therefore, it must be dream he concluded rather quickly.  
  
The boy he guessed to be Kazaki Akito since there was simply no one else around. Akito fixed his gaze on his mother and grinned. Then the expression suddenly changed and he wore an incomprehensible look on his face. Hisoka thought to himself that small children these days were too philosophical.  
  
"Are we a family?" he asked in a small curious voice.  
  
His mother abruptly turned her attention to him. The sandwich she was making rested on the counter in disassembled pieces. She lifted her sunglasses up to glance at her son. Then Yumiko gave him a little smile that made her face lose its demanding look.  
  
"Of course we are. Why wouldn't we be?"  
  
Family. It seemed a little exaggerated to call just the two of them family, but he supposed it technically was true.   
  
Akito stared intently at the sheet music before him and began to practice his song again. He dropped the topic causing Yumiko to forget about the little question and she went back to completing her little task.  
  
The notes slowly melted together as Hisoka watched Akito practice. The electronic sound suddenly stopped and Akito was holding his hands in his lap with a blank face. Questionable silence took up the room with its uncomfortable stature. Yumiko didn't even seem to notice this.  
  
"Today, Hayashi-sensei said I played very well in class," his subdued tone ruled out the option that he wanted to please his mother with this.  
  
"Really? Well, I'm proud of you," Yumiko replied absently while munching on her sandwich and reading a magazine.  
  
Akito stared down at his fingers and closed his eyes as if focusing on something. "She said I played so much better than the others in my class. She said I was special. And…" he stopped in mid sentence as if he wasn't sure he wanted to say the rest or not. After a few moments, he decided to go on, "And it was because I didn't have anyone to help me like the others."  
  
The magazine was laid down on the table.  
  
"Everyone had a family member with them. To help them read notes, carry the keyboard…"  
  
The sandwich joined the magazine.  
  
"I knew you couldn't come, but I thought maybe it was because we weren't a real family."  
  
Yumiko knelt down and placed a hand on her son's shoulder. "You know I wanted to be there. We are a family, but sometimes we just can't make it." She hadn't noticed the little frown the boy had when she said this.  
  
"I know," he said simply. "But during the lesson, I kept wanting to be with you. I didn't care about the keyboard, I just wanted to be with you."  
  
Yumiko smiled at him gently. "Wanting to always be with someone means that you love them, Akito."  
  
Hisoka looked on as the boy played with the stiff zipper of his blue jacket, thinking. The constant murkiness over Hisoka's empathy was suddenly gone. Soft light of the room illuminated the sapphire of the jacket and set the focus on him. The boy stood up from his cross-legged position and hugged his mother. "Then I must love you okaasan," he murmured into her ear.  
  
A look of contentment was on the woman's face as she held her child.   
  
"And I will love you always."  
  
The oncoming thoughts made Hisoka feel the shallow selfishness in himself. He wanted this piece of Akito's life for himself, no matter the cost. Love, a foreign word to an unwanted child. He just wanted the pain to go away.  
  
And so Hisoka had been horrified to see the manifestation of his selfish parents that he had never seen in himself. Then again, was it so wrong to want something as badly as he wanted to be loved?  
  
"And I will love you always."  
  
It was a phrase that would stay engraved in his memory.  
  
  
_ _ _  
  
  
  
Drifting sakura. It was everywhere.  
  
"Don't let me fall."  
  
"There is nothing we can do."  
  
"Please, I just want to see him."  
  
If only he could figure out who was speaking.  
  
The voice sounded vaguely familiar. No, very familiar…just unidentifiable.  
  
"Then see him inside your heart."  
  
"I…can't. There's nothing there"  
  
  
_ _ _  
  
  
  
Cold glass against his forehead made Hisoka snap into consciousness.   
  
Window?  
  
He looked up and saw his own green eyes.   
  
Slowly standing up straight, he looked at his own reflection. It was wavering as if he'd collapse any minute. He turned the faucet on and splashed his face with the icy water. The sudden cold contact cleared his head a little.  
  
Standing the in the public bathroom with his head in his hands, elbows resting on the sink's edges, he contemplated the events so far. They were pieces that barely connected. First, they had to be dreams. Everything since the last time he met the child. There was always something to tip it off that it was a dream, but they all seemed so real.  
  
"Tough date?"  
  
His head jerked up to look at the man who had walked in. The man looked middle-aged except a few gray hairs-dressed in a plaid shirt and khakis. He empathetically felt laidback and especially easy going.  
  
"Oh, no…" the confused shinigami still had to figure out where he was. From the looks of it, a restaurant of some sort. "I just don't know what I'm doing here."  
  
The man chuckled. "In that case, it must be an impossible date. Word of advice, tell her how you feel before dinner ends, or else she'll think you're insensitive."  
  
Hisoka nodded then murmured a quiet thanks and walked out of the bathroom. That was strange.  
  
He suddenly spotted Tsuzuki waving enthusiastically at him. The words of the man from the bathroom came back to him and he almost laughed-tell her how you feel.  
  
Tsuzuki, thank god he was all right. Then again, this could all be another dream. Nah, nothing wrong so far; he was probably just hallucinating and imagined the whole deal.  
  
"Hisoka, you took so long in the bathroom I thought you ran away or something," Tsuzuki teased as he surveyed the food before them. The violet of his eyes lit up as he spotted the desert amidst dinner.  
  
"I would never leave you Tsuzuki. I'm just glad you didn't run away." There was so much Hisoka wanted to say so much, but it would startle Tsuzuki if he did. It would also be just out of character for him to be sappy like that.  
  
Tsuzuki smiled his usual smile and reached for the desert. Eyeing him suspiciously, Hisoka slapped his hand away. "That's not the order in which you eat dinner."  
  
"Aw, Hisoka, come on. You know the desert looks so much better than the rest of the food. I'll even save you some. I promise this time."  
  
Hisoka almost blurted out his thoughts but kept his silence and gave his partner a pointed look. "I'm not paying for dinner then."  
  
"No! Hisoka's being mean and scary like Tatsumi-san!"  
  
The younger shinigami almost smiled. He really did miss Tsuzuki, no matter what his bad habits were. Tsuzuki began to talk about some new type of chocolate he had found and rest of the evening drifted past in a second.   
  
The air was chilly when the shinigami exited the restaurant, the tinge of winter still in the cool march air. Hisoka felt more content than he had been in the past few days. Then again, maybe time was warped in dreams.  
  
"Will you?" he hesitated. Tsuzuki turned his attention to his partner. "Will you…walk me home? I don't feel like being alone."  
  
"Of course."   
  
And at that moment, everything felt so wonderful, so normal.   
  
Hisoka smiled, for the first time in a while.  
  
The sidewalks were quiet without disturbance with a peaceful breeze passing through. Pulling his coat closer to him, Hisoka shivered against the chill. When they arrived at a street crossing, what he saw on the ground made him freeze in an instant.  
  
Red hair lied on the ground resembling spools of thread.  
  
At that point it all became surreal.  
  
Tsuzuki immediately rushed over to the girl. The younger shinigami reluctantly followed-he felt so angry. Why did she have to ruin everything? The girl just had to appear out of nowhere.  
  
Painfully, she moaned when Tsuzuki shook her. What was even worse than her unconscious state was the bright tacky red spot on her side. Hisoka merely stared at her while Tsuzuki was frantically trying to wake her.  
  
"Kiri-chan! What happened? Please wake up!" the shaking hadn't helped much, and yelling certainly wasn't working either. Tsuzuki knew her? It just wasn't time to ask about such things, if they had been back in the restaurant, he would have interrogated his partner irrationally.  
  
The girl's eyelashes fluttered a bit, but there was only emptiness in her brown eyes. Stillness sat upon blood. It was a dream, if she was here, right? Hisoka only felt hate, no concern. The bothersome girl could die a thousand times and he wouldn't even blink.  
  
"Tsuzuki-san?"  
  
Barely audible words came out disjointedly as if she couldn't think straight. Tsuzuki hugged her like she would disappear if he let go.   
  
"I'm so cold."  
  
"It's okay, I'm going to take you to the hospital," the shinigami said reassuringly as he picked her up from the freezing ground and began to walk. Hisoka followed his footsteps automatically without much thought.  
  
"No, I want to go home. Can you take me home?" she murmured.  
  
Hisoka placed a hand over his heart when he felt something abnormal there. It wasn't his own heartbeat. The movement felt like a weak heart beating with his at the same time. He paused a bit feeling the frail thump against his hand.   
  
Tsuzuki walked on with the dying girl in his arms.   
  
Hisoka only observed, he had no wish to be anywhere near the girl.  
  
"Tsuzuki-san, I hurt. Please take me home."  
  
Tsuzuki waved down a cab but found he had no third hand to open the back door. "Hisoka! Help me get her into the cab."  
  
Walking forward again, Hisoka proceeded to help Tsuzuki.   
  
_  
Only because Tsuzuki asked, not for you._  
  
  
He got a closer look at the increasing red spot on the girl's shirt; there was a gaping whole in the middle of it. The cab door's hinges were tight and unyielding. The only logical way to save time was if Hisoka sat in the backseat with her while Tsuzuki sat in the front seat since he was still carrying her.  
  
The trip took no time; they turned out to be only a few blocks away from the hospital. Hisoka kept staring at the girl's hair. It looked like the red staining her clothes in the dark. Spun strings dyed in blood. He closed his eyes and felt the heartbeat against his own slowing.  
  
"I want home."   
  
The shinigami pair quickly moved out of the cab before the hospital with the unconscious girl. She stirred slightly against Tsuzuki and whispered something inaudible as they rushed toward the white building quickly.   
  
Sharp cutting wind whispered. It spoke as it stole away life.  
  
Hisoka felt his heart stop, or rather, the other heart stop. There was a silence occupying everything, disturbed only by the hurried footsteps of his companion. He could feel the empty place where the heartbeat used to be. Tsuzuki was about to pull the clear glass door open when Hisoka placed a hand on his arm holding him back.  
  
"There is no need, she isn't there anymore."  
  
The shinigami looked at the girl's face and knew it was the truth. He stood for a second staring at the body he held then wordlessly walked to the nearest park bench and gently laid the girl down.   
  
Tsuzuki glanced at the red now staining his clothes like it was sin staining him. The guilt radiated from him as cold from ice. "Why do I keep doing this? Why do I keep killing people?"  
  
The expression on his face told everything: his hate for himself, his uncertainty, his remorse. "You didn't kill her, Tsuzuki. No one will blame you."  
  
"Don't tell me that. You don't know me."  
  
Hisoka was falling asleep on his feet and he knew it. This dream wasn't going to be finished, not yet, he decided. The conflict hadn't been solved, like a story stopped in the middle. The world kept fading into black. There was simply no control over it, his limbs felt paralyzed.  
  
"Please don't leave me Tsuzuki."  
  
The words barely left his lips when the images all faded. Motion, color, sound, touch all melted into one abyss beneath him.   
  
  
  
_ _ _  


  
  
"Why?"  
_  
  
Dreams held no quintessence in substance._

  
"There is no reason."  
  
  
_ There is simply no explanation why people hang on to them so tightly._

  
"Make one up for me."  
  
The surreal shadows still covered the voice's face, but through the absence of light, a body could be seen. A figure wrought from mere outlines of gray, sketches without texture or depth.  
  
No matter how hard Hisoka looked, it was nothing more than lines.  


  
_ _ _  


  
  
*cough*pointsDown*cough*  
aka  
That purple review button looks nice down there...


	5. Crooked

Many apologies for not posting this...it was written before Christmas...this thing gets longer and longer, it was originally only 4 chapters, not anymore.

**Twilight  
**_by calerica_

**Chapter 4**

  
  
It was similar to a tube. Looking through a tube, seeing the crystal image of only a small patch of space while everything outside was blurred. And in that tube was someone dressed in a white shirt and black skirt without a face.  
  
The faceless person bent down into the ground and pulled up something. It was too small an image to tell what she held in her hands. Green and blue merging was all there was. Paleness and the absence of clouds made it look as if it were an empty canvas of an indecisive artist.  
  
Hisoka saw someone climbing out, another person that seemed similar to the outline of the other. And suddenly he felt himself being lifted up like a line tugging sharply at his arm. Somebody was pulling him up, and the air and light exploded as if he hadn't seen it in eternity.   
  
He looked to see who had released him.  
  
The faceless figure stood with her back to Hisoka. In hindsight, the person had a face, Hisoka probably just didn't remember it or recognize it.  
  
"Who are you?"  
  
"Someone buried inside."  
  
There was a tension that twisted through air like fear and anger. Maybe it had nothing to do with fear-Hisoka just didn't want to think anymore. Yet something whispered that she was afraid.  
  
"But there isn't anyone inside me."   
  
"Maybe you don't look hard enough."  
  
The walls fell flat like foil being peeled away. The figure disappeared just as fast as she came.  
  
"Why won't you tell me who you are?"  
  
"You already know my name."

  
_ _ _  


  
Hisoka was running down the halls of the Shokan division.  
  
He wasn't running for the fun of it as much as he felt he was running from something. Unexplained, there was a feeling of dread seeping into his thoughts. All he could do was keep running for fear whatever was behind him would catch up.   
  
Soon, his body tired out and he felt he couldn't go another step without collapsing. Hisoka stopped and bent over, panting. What he saw behind him was a pair of blond shinigami trying to catch up with him.  
  
"Oh shit." He muttered.  
  
"Hisoka-chan!" the bubbly Saya said as she rushed to give him a bone crushing hug. Her partner soon joined and held the struggling Hisoka tightly.   
  
"My! You've gotten even cuter since the last time we saw you! I just want to shave your hair and make it a wig for me!" Yuma exclaimed running her fingers through his hair.   
  
Hisoka laughed nervously at the thought; he wouldn't put it above them to do something of the kind. The girls just wouldn't leave him alone for one second. "Oh Hisoka-chan, Yuma and I found the prettiest outfit. You will look absolutely gorgeous in it!" Saya said happily as she let go and straightened her long hair out of the mess.  
  
"I uh…have to go ask Tatsumi-san about…something. Now! How about we talk later?"  
  
"Only if you promise to try out the outfit!"  
  
Suddenly he stopped, eyes narrowing. "What kind of outfit?"  
  
"One that'll look so adorable on you!" The two were nodding energetically. Oh well, five minutes of humiliation was better than hours of being around them. At least, it was that way he saw it.   
  
"Okay. But only for a few minutes, and nobody else gets to see it."  
  
Saya and Yuma were no longer paying any attention to him. They were too busy squealing and screaming with joy.

  
_ _ _  


  
Previous experience with the hyper Hokkaido girls taught Hisoka to think ahead and keep to himself as much as possible if he wanted to keep any of his dignity. Right after the girls left, he found himself in contemplation of the mistake he had just made.   
  
Trying on clothes from Saya and Yuma. Did he lose his mind?  
  
He smoothed the wrinkles from his shirt then walked on calmly. Better figure out what was going on; it could be just another dream. The hallway seemed different than he remembered, but other than that, nothing was out of the ordinary. He still had to find Tsuzuki just to be sure.   
  
As he walked back the way he ran from, he noticed something strange. The door to his left was red. In his recollection, no offices in the division had anything but white doors. Aside from no indication of a name anywhere near the door, it was quite ordinary.   
  
There was only one way to be sure.  
  
Hisoka knocked.

  
_ _ _  


  
"Onii-chan, how long do we have to keep him asleep?"  
  
The older boy reassured his sister and replied, "As long as we have to."  
  
The little girl nodded. Her chubby fingers strayed from her lap and found the unmoving hand of the unconscious shinigami lying before her. She wrapped her warm hands around his icy fingers while a frown set in her clear eyes.

  
_ _ _

  
  
There had been no reply when he knocked on the crimson door nor was it locked. Hisoka turned the knob without hesitation only to find it was Watari's lab. Since when was the door red? He couldn't ignore the suspicious inner voice telling him it was another elaborately spun dream. Yet, Hisoka wanted to believe that he was truly back in Meifu.  
  
He suddenly noticed another red door. This one was identical to the door he had just entered through. Its bright red was distorted to a darker color by the shadows in its corner directly opposite of the lab's entrance.  
  
Once again, he turned the knob. The shinigami gasped as he found himself back in the hallway. It didn't make sense how could a door opposite of the hallway lead him back to it? He looked around and found it was the exact same hallway he was accustomed to.   
  
The only puzzling mystery was-there was only one red door. The door behind him where he had emerged from Watari's lab. Turning back, he looked at the original entrance to the lab.   
  
It was nowhere to be seen.   
  
He told himself to get more sleep.  
  
A high pitched giggle echoed down the tiled hall. Then he heard them.  
  
"Hisoka-chan!" they shouted in unison.  
  
Of all things.  
  
Yuma held up a bag as Saya took his hand and dragged him down the hall. Hisoka could feel their excitement which brought dread to him. They pushed him through a random door into a hotel like room.  
  
"I don't remember our division having this room…"  
  
"You're so silly Hisoka-chan!"  
  
"Every door goes to every other door! How could you forget that?"  
  
Hisoka merely nodded in confusion. Every door to every other door…what was wrong with this picture? He didn't question it further-dreams had a way of being distorted, right? Before he could think more, Yuma held up what the bag contained.  
  
What was he thinking when he agreed to this?  
  
Saya glanced at her partner nervously then muttered, "See…we didn't really have an outfit for you," then she brightly added, "But Hisoka-chan looks good in anything!"  
  
He could feel himself twitching.   
  
"So we just got Yuma's clothes!"  
  
Dress up, it felt so stupid. Yet a promise was a promise, and he didn't want to find out what the girls would do to him if he started running. There was a small bothersome irritant at the bottom of his thoughts, the kind that pushed itself up and eventually had to be faced.  
  
The curse. They would see the curse.  
  
Hisoka snatched the green skirt and sleeveless shirt, stalked to the bathroom, and stopped by the door. If every door went to every other door…he pushed open the door slowly. No such luck, it was a bathroom.  
  
Through the shirt he could see the carved curse that killed him as well as the more visible scars on his arms. They made him shiver despite the current room temperature. When he opened the door, a brilliant flash greeted him.  
  
"Take another one Saya!"  
  
Pictures. Of course, why didn't he see this coming?  
  
Hisoka crossed his arms and scowled in protest. At least he wasn't wearing a mini-skirt or something. He suddenly felt a twinge of sadness floating toward him. The curse, they were looking at the curse.   
  
"This is indecent."  
  
The overexcited shinigami got over their shock at seeing the curse and pushed Hisoka to the full sized mirror on the other side of the room.  
  
"Don't you look just lovely?"  
  
Hisoka frowned at his reflection and replied grumpily, "NO."  
  
"You know, we could go shopping with him like this and pass him off as a girl!"  
  
Mirror. It wasn't himself inside the mirror.  
  
"Hisoka-chan? What are you staring at?"  
  
His mirror image had pale skin devoid of imperfections. No scars, no curse, no pain filled feelings. The reflection suddenly looked at him and smiled gently. Hisoka recoiled from it in surprise as the image beckoned him. He reached forward to touch the metallic copy.   
  
His fingers couldn't feel the cool pane of glass that met his fingers.   
  
"Don't do that!"  
  
It was too late. Saya was yelling at an empty mirror.   
  
"What is wrong with him today? Not even remembering that mirrors were doors. Come on, he probably ended up back in his office or something."

  
_ _ _  


  
Entering the mirror was similar to walking from a warm room suddenly to a cold hallway. The sensation was strange, but the stranger thing was…he was wearing his old clothes.  
  
"You…just who are you?" he asked exasperated.  
  
His reflection still in Yuma's clothes stared at him intently. Green meeting green. It walked around Hisoka as if studying him. "So you're the heir." That voice and this one were the same, a feminine mirror of him own.  
  
"You haven't answered my question."  
  
She smiled with a hint of cruelty on her lips, a disturbing image of himself. "That is very simple," she pointed to herself.   
  
"I am Hisoka."  
  
The response infuriated him, "No, you're a coward. Why do you hide behind my face?"  
  
The reflection stopped smiling and stared through him as if she was focusing on something behind Hisoka. "This is my face," she said, her voice chilling and jagged with unconfined anger.   
  
"Stop this!" copycats had always annoyed him.  
  
She fixed an angry gaze on Hisoka. "You have no right to tell me that. I should be telling you to stop it. You stole my parents. You stole my face. You stole my life.You even stole my name."  
  
"I don't understand. You must be crazy."  
  
The ground beneath his feel shifted, a bizarre sensation of unbalance, Hisoka staggered back to keep upright. It didn't stop until he was staring at a gray piece of stone set into the ground. Familiar kanji carved into it.  
  
  
_Hisoka, that is your grave._  
  
  
"Our father was so intent on continuing the family, continuing the sick traditions. All of them wanted you instead of me. And so I never had a chance to live. It's not your fault, I know, but I hate you anyway."  
  
It was hard to process the current words spilling out of her mouth. Hisoka lowered his empathic shields and tapped into her thoughts. He stiffened as the information flooded his senses. Hisoka looked up from the grave.   
  
"You killed me."  
  
A string of heartbreaking emotions wrapped around Hisoka in a warped fashion. His sister placed a hand on his shoulder, her upset expression shifting to a smile. "Everyone wanted you-the heir who would continue on the Kurosaki family-not me, the worthless child. There are so many things I want to say right now, but there is no time. I don't know whether to keep hating you or to take you away. I screamed for so long, but you couldn't hear me. Yet now that you can, I find almost nothing to say. Maybe someday I can understand it and explain. Until then, promise to remember me because I want you to be happy. I want you to escape from here."  
  
Hisoka was still reeling from what she told him and could only speak one word to her self-contradiction.   
  
"Why?"  
  
She pulled her dazed brother into a soft hug and whispered into his ear. "You took away my pain. From the moment I saw you with your surreal eyes, I wanted you like everyone else. I can't keep hating you…I think you stole my heart away too. If you are happy, then maybe I can be too. You and I, we are almost the same person." She refrained from adding "but we're not" onto the end.  
  
The shinigami was staring at the grave again. That didn't make sense-she had been angry with him just a moment ago. So many things didn't add up, including how his sister was in his dream if she had really existed and died.   
  
"What are you? A ghost?"  
  
"I am what you want me to be."  
  
The evasive answering was starting to grade Hisoka's nerves. He could feel her arms around him tightening. Perhaps she was the one helping him and confusing him in the process. That was a guess he ventured. "How do I get out of these dreams?"  
  
"You learn to see who you are. You imprison yourself in reality only to be freed in dreams-the only truly beautiful place. Let reality free you from this dream. If you can't find it in yourself, find it in me."  
  
Hisoka didn't quite understand her. A person who never lived couldn't give advice. "You really do hate me if you're willing to tell me lies," he accused nonchalantly without thinking.  
  
She stepped away from him, surprised, as if it repulsed her to touch another person.  
  
"If you are real, what wouldn't you do to me? If I took away so much?" He stared at his own face with a calmness that could only be described as tranquility before the storm. "You hate me enough to tell me useless melodramatic drivel. Just why do you even bother? You're probably just that girl trying to drive me crazy."  
  
On the contrary from what he expected, she smiled.   
  
"You are so stubborn. I should have known better than to think you were gullible. But don't you see it? In taking everything that was mine, you became me. And I became you. We are both undeniably Kurosaki Hisoka. It is your choice to accept. You can reject yourself, but please give me something for everything you took."  
  
"So this is all in your selfishness." He remained unmoved by her explanation. People couldn't be trusted; they were all tainted inside, even someone who never lived to experience the world's ugliness.  
  
Her whispers barely audible as she added, "I only wish to see Hisoka happy."  
  
She was disappearing, dust slowly dispersing into the wind.  
  
There was still the chance none of this was real, but sometime told him to hold on to what she advised. He took another look at her. Her form was his exact copy, but there was one difference-she wasn't an empath. Hisoka could sense her sincerity, but hidden within it was an uneasy enmity that worried him. The chance was too big a risk.  
  
It was a risk he would take. Tentatively going over in his head if he was really accepting this, he stumbled upon words he had to speak before she left. The other Hisoka kept insisting they were the same person…  
  
He made up his mind: no two souls could be alike.   
  
"No," he suddenly said firmly, "You're not Hisoka, I am."   
  
Hisoka reached for her hand in a firm grasp. She closed her eyes in satisfactory, a strange perception of his words, then shook his hand as if in compromise. All evidence left of his sister's manifestation was a handful of sakura-beautiful and frightening. Even though the feelings they would bring rekindles itself, flowers still faded and decayed.   
  
He let the petals scatter over the grave that still stared up at him.  
  
"If I am Hisoka, then you are Himitsu."

_ _ _

took a little break...I had most of it written but then deleted half of it because some better ideas came after listening to Jisastu no Riyuu by Pierrot which everyone should listen to. Sorry if it's confusing, it should start getting less confusing from here out. If it doesn't, then you're doomed.

Remember: crack is whack and to REVIEW. YAy. 


	6. Sacred

Some dood's been downloading chemistry periodicals on my internet account and it got killed. A lame yet real reason for teh delay. This chapter is really sucky since i didn't look over it in detail....Only one more chapter...at least I think so. 

**Twilight**  
_by calerica_  
  
Chapter 5

The sky was colorless, as was the ground, with only a thin line of gray marking the linear horizon. Complete silence entwined itself in the world around him. He took a step forward, testing the ground. A slight crunch met his ears when his shoe pressed down on a soft, stiff material.  
  
An inspection of the ground turned up no tangible explanation. The ground was a mix between snow and plastic—not cold or smooth, just miniscule pieces of unknown fiber. The air around him was crisp, scentless, and absent of all odor.   
  
Hisoka walked on.  
  
Clearly perturbed by the vacant landscape, the shinigami turned around in circles searching an outlet. None was to be found. He did, however, uncover a neat trail of deep red footprints behind him. Startled, Hisoka took another step forward and kept his eyes glued on the indention he left behind. The crater slowly dyed itself red from the center outward.   
  
Green eyes widened at the sight. He took a step sideways. The same process occurred with the new footprint. He jumped as far as he could. Another pair of red prints surfaced. Hisoka wondered at the strange world before him. The pure setting with blood footsteps was oddly reminiscent. He concluded his broken memories were playing tricks with him as they often did.   
  
Looking back at the trail behind him, Hisoka almost felt remorseful that he had ever moved. The white was tainted with red now, no longer a serene, unbroken sea.   
  
"Konnichiwa." A soft-spoken voice approached him—from the left, if his hearing served him correctly.   
  
Hisoka turned to see a child absent of color and dressed in spotless white to match the ground. The child's face was the same one he used to see in the mirror when he was alive. He stared for a moment, unnerved by the child's striking resemblance to himself. Curiously, Hisoka reached out to the monochrome tinted boy with his empathy and received the same feeling of inquisitiveness.  
  
"What's your name?" Hisoka asked, careful not to frighten the boy who looked as if he would bolt any second.   
  
"What is a name? I don't think I have one—whatever it is." The reply was a tangle of mutters, like a child afraid to speak.  
  
Hisoka nodded to himself, sensing that whatever answers he might receive then on from the child weren't going to be very legitimate. Since it was the only way, it was still worth asking, wasn't it?   
  
"Do you know where this place is?"  
  
"I'm not sure," the boy was shivering, "You're the first person I've seen here. Well, except Him. But, It's cold here."   
  
Instinctively, Hisoka reached up to his neck to see if he had a scarf. His fingers brushed against soft wool and tugged at the loose knot. He pulled the fabric off. A sudden chill whispered against his throat, one he hadn't realized existed. He looked down at the garment in his hand. It was the same blood red as his footsteps.   
  
"Here, take my scarf," Hisoka offered.  
  
The boy wrapped his round fingers around one end of the scarf and stared at the wool in amazement. "I've never seen anything in this tone before," he said with awe in his breathy voice. Hisoka took the other end and twisted the fabric around the boy's neck.   
  
"Arigato."  
  
"No need. Do you know why it's so…white around here?"  
  
"It's mostly been this way. I remember when there used to be—what's that word? I think it was color. Then everything started to fade into gray. I really want to see more, but there's never been anything here. It's all empty. Sometime I see Him, I want Him to stay, but no matter how hard I try, the white always covers me up and He never sees me."  
  
Hisoka narrowed his eyes. "Who is He?"  
  
"The man with purple eyes," the boy said matter-of-factly.  
  
Tsuzuki? Suddenly Hisoka felt the hollowness inside.   
  
Hisoka began to understand a little of what was happening then. In every dream he found a piece of himself, and finally, he had found himself in the form of a boy and a world bleached of color. It said a lot about himself that he wasn't able to come to terms with yet.  
  
Behind the cocoon of white, he saw a bit of color. The sun was rising, slowly staining the sky a sudden gray. The boy took no notice, as if he couldn't sense the gradation.   
  
"It's Him." The boy's tone was unexcited as if the event were ordinary on a day-to-day basis.   
  
Immediately Hisoka looked up to see Tsuzuki who was staring directly at him also. The surprise was equal in both shinigami, but it was Tsuzuki who spoke first. "What are you doing here?"  
  
"I don't know; this has been so crazy. You're probably not even real."  
  
Tsuzuki considered this. It was an answer almost unrelated to the question, but it was Hisoka. Good enough explanation for him. Suddenly, the boy seized his chance and spoke up. "If you can see him, can you see me too?"  
  
"Of course."  
  
A fatal mistake. He should have never spoken.  
  
"Oh," the boy looked down at his feet, feeling slightly faint. "That's good." He smiled, possibly the first time ever—a foreign feeling. Tsuzuki's eyes widened in horror at the mistake he'd made. The expression on his face slacked into a strange mixture of horror and regret.   
  
Hisoka wasn't sure what had just happened, but it seemed the boy was the one falling asleep this time. Gray skin fading into a lighter pastel, the boy sat down upon the snow ground.   
  
"I can't keep my eyes open."  
  
Instinctively, Hisoka put his arms around the boy to keep him upright when he unintentionally fell back.  
  
"I should have never said anything to him. I knew if I did, he'd die, but I didn't pay attention. This shouldn't have happened. I killed another person. How long does the list go on? I really am a monster…"  
  
"Tsuzuki, you're babbling," Hisoka said sharply. He was still trying to understand what just happened.  
  
"I'm sorry, it's just that…I'm such a monster."  
  
The boy opened his eyes and looked up at Hisoka. His formerly colorless eyes were now brilliant green. "I think I remember…my name is Hisoka," he whispered.   
  
Hisoka laid the boy down, the red scarf draped like a stream of blood from his neck. He was still a boy inside. A boy who wanted to see more than he knew—a child who wanted someone to notice him as more than he was.  
  
"Tsuzuki, please don't talk about being a monster. I'm tired of it. Everyday you say the same thing."  
  
The older shinigami looked taken back at the blunt statement. "But it's what I am…"  
  
"I don't know you why you think that, but you're not. I give up because I know you're probably never going to accept that you're just a normal person. So I'm going to say this. I'd rather be a monster than myself…because…a monster knows what it is."  
  
"Are you saying that just to make me feel better?"  
  
Exasperated, Hisoka sighed. "No. I'm not. Just don't go do something stupid, because if you ever left, I think I'd go mad." It was a confession made with much difficulty, and a half done one at that.  
  
On the contrary to what he expected, Tsuzuki replied immediately, "I think I'd go crazy too, because I think I'm going to always want to be with you. You keep me sane. So you can't get rid of me that easily." He knelt down next to the silent form of the boy. "Even though I did a selfish thing in locking him away in death, I think he's happy now. But still…"  
  
"Don't think about it anymore."  
  
It was a mutual agreement. The sky was a shade of rose and yet the ground remained white. Something in the air whispered as it flowed by; Hisoka make out the words.  
  
In the washed-out space, amethyst met emerald. Hisoka thought he saw gray seeping into everything, but couldn't understand the still indeterminate colors. Wasn't the world supposed to turn into color?   
  
  
_ _ _  
  
  
  
Nine o'clock. The second hand ticked past twelve indiscreetly. Only fifteen minutes had passed—an eternity to the sleeping Hisoka. Outside the bedroom, Tsuzuki had just begun conversation with Yumiko.   
  
Laughter, breathing of a sleeping baby, the neighbor's raised voice seeped through the walls. In his birdcage, Hisoka thought he heard them. Or they could have figments of his imagination.  
  
He supposed he would never know.  
  
Hisoka pressed his hands against the frozen steel bars encompassing him. The transition from a pure white world to a cage was a mere flash that he couldn't remember. One moment, he saw violet; the next, silver poles grew up over him. Gray concrete in broad daylight stretched as far as his eyes could reach.   
  
With envy, the shinigami watched as various birds flew in and out above him. The chirping was not unlike the memory of him visiting the zoo, different songs—each trying to reach some other creature.  
  
A woodpecker flew by him and he muttered a single word.  
  
"One."  
  
A cardinal flew above his head.  
  
"Two."  
  
A robin swooped down outside.  
  
"Three."  
  
A sparrow idly hopped outside the cage.  
  
"Four."  
  
A hummingbird buzzed by his ear.  
  
"Five."  
  
A pair of mockingbirds danced their ritual flight.  
  
"Six."  
  
A blue bird circled overhead.  
  
"Seven."  
  
A raven screamed and landed before his feet, yellow eyes starting straight up.  
  
"Eight."  
  
The raven stepped closer and Hisoka backed a step. Fluttering in his ears increased as the birds flew faster. Still, the raven stayed in its statue state. The shinigami broke his staring contest at the black bird and look up at the whirl of feathers. Every creature was gliding through the air as if time had sped up and they were in a hurry to reach home.  
  
Hisoka look back down at the spot where the raven stood piercing him with its gaze. The bird didn't even spare a glance as it swiftly flew up to join its comrades in the thin air with an earsplitting scream. He let his eyes follow the bird as it spiraled into the gray sky above.   
  
A cage of inimitable dreams suddenly seemed something Tsuzuki would be interested in hearing about. He was tired of keeping whatever thoughts and revelations he came upon to himself. Hisoka looked at the sky closely as if it was the color in a disinterested world. In that moment, there was nothing more that he wanted than to be able to fly—fly into the sky.  
  
He silently gave up all of his doubt.   
  
The ground beneath his feet drained away. Oddly enough, Hisoka couldn't come to terms with what he was really doing. It seemed like flying away from something he should face, but at the same time, it felt like sinking. He let himself close his eyes against the birds zipping through the air. It didn't matter anymore. This was the last hallucination he was going to go through, Hisoka determined.  
  
Splitting of glass met his ears as he felt his arms transform into a pair of broken wings.   
  
Hisoka felt solid ground below his feet once again and glanced down to see the scars on his arms burning brilliant red. The fragile wings were no more. Whatever silvery thoughts he had were driven away when the crying began. First it was soft tears, and then it escalated into sobs that racked the tiny body.  
  
He forced his eyes to look at the red haired girl sitting a grass field. The sky glowed an eerie washed out imitation of a sunrise. Instantly he knew this was not a regular dream—just two people from a reality that that had pushed them out. Hisoka knelt down to the child's eye level.  
  
"Why are you crying?" he tried hard to keep the unpleasant tone from his voice. It still sounded terribly frozen.  
  
The girl wiped at her eyes in a clumsy way, her shirtsleeve already contained darkened streaks of wetness. "You broke the dream. Now you're going take her away." The accusation was dragged out with hiccups interrupting every other word.  
  
Hisoka glared, already feeling defensive. "We'll see about that. How about you tell me how you made those dreams."  
  
"I put you in a loop thing." The hiccups grew worse.  
  
He narrowed his eyes. "But you're a kid. How can you know all those things about me? How can a kid like you make up all that?"  
  
Long sighs of the grass in wind filled the pause. The girl looked down avoiding eye contact. She peered up and whispered in a pleading whisper, "I didn't. You did."  
  
The simple words were a rude awakening.   
  
"Why?" The single syllable was dragged out.  
  
"Why not?" came the small, defiant answer. Children were really stupid. Really. Hisoka frowned in disdain. "You won't take her away will you?" The timid words mixed with the ground.  
  
The shinigami felt so tired. He wanted out. It seemed pointless to explain to a child her mother was always meant to die. The field progressively darkened from green grass to dim jade—he had mistaken a sunset for a sunrise. Explaining his metaphor of twilight, which sounded ridiculous, was simply dumb.  
  
Distraught filled the girl when Hisoka didn't reply. "Please let her stay. I'm begging you, Kurosaki-san."  
  
Hisoka heaved a frustrated sigh and sat down beside the girl. "Let me tell you a story," he began, "There once was a boy who lived in a place very far away. Everything was always changing around him like no one cared."  
  
The girl looked up at the unwilling story-teller. "Is this true or are you making it up?"  
  
"Just listen," he demanded, patience running out. "He would watch the sunset everyday and think to himself. You see, the sun always set at twilight no matter what so it was a relief from everything that kept changing. This boy decided that one day he was going to go into the earth just like the sun because he was tired. Once he began to follow the sun, he found he couldn't turn back. Because everything that follows the sun can't pull away."  
  
Hisoka hoped the girl understood his point.  
  
Her brown eyes were opened wide, a sign she was really paying attention. "So what happened next?"  
  
The story must have been too vague. Unfortunate really.  
  
"Nothing happened. That's the end."  
  
"Well that's a dumb story, to not have an end."  
  
Hisoka glared at the girl who leaned the other way defensively. "You don't get it do you? Following the sun means dying. Your mother is going to die and there is nothing anyone in the world can do about it. She is following the sun into the earth and being buried. I'm just here to make sure she gets there. Why can't you just accept that? What you're doing is pointless. It's making me frustrated and not getting you anywhere!" He stopped when he realized he was shouting.   
  
Tears welled up again in the child's eyes from fear and hurt. Her head bent down and the red hair hid her face.   
  
"Are you going to let me out now?"  
  
The girls nodded slowly while sniffing.   
  
"Why?" he had to ask again, "I thought you wanted to keep your mother."  
  
He hadn't noticed but the sky was a light purple and the sun was almost below the black horizon. Shadows settled onto the field discretely in patches. The girl hugged herself against the coming chill.   
  
"If she goes down with the sun…" the child paused to sniff away her tears, "then she must come up with the same sun next morning."  
  
Hisoka felt himself slip away, just as the sun dipped below.  


- - - 

  
No lame prompt to review here. Get lost.


	7. The Final

The last chapter, because writing more would be pointless.

**Twilight**

_by clover calerica_

**Chapter 6**

The soft pitter-patter of night rain drew Hisoka to his senses. The almost pleasant sound quickly faded as moody rain retreated back to the thickly clouded sky. The air was sticky with still unprecipitated moisture. Maybe today, yesterday, tomorrow never happened.

He opened his eyes in weary protest of the headache he knew was coming.

Two pairs of blinking eyes peered from above. Each child drew a long breath as the Shinigami gradually came to his senses and sat up to rubbed his eyes. This reality felt different, clearer. The feeling akin to a hidden TV left on mute buzzing across the room was suddenly gone. Hisoka instantly knew that the dreams never occurred. He couldn't think of anything other than having never been elsewhere.

Sullen silence piled between them, each string strung too tightly to vibrate. The boy was first to speak, a cold and unforgiving sound.

"You let him wake up."

Akito glared at his sister. He was met with a stuttering answer. "But...but he told me that...I think..."

The girl's words were cut off as her brother slapped her. She looked up shocked—her eyes rimmed red. Hisoka watched at the beginning of a little confrontation as if watching TV, still a bit confused.

"Look what's you've done! It's all your fault. You know what's he's going to do." Akito pointed his finger at the still dazed Hisoka.

"I..."

"You let him wake up, put him back to sleep."

She brushed her eyes roughly.

"I can't."

"What do you mean you can't?"

"I don't know how."

Hisoka wasn't paying the slightest attention to the children anymore. A spider on the bedpost had caught his interest. It was just a brown spider, nothing special, but he kept watching it. The spider's fragile woven strings broke as its needle legs touched each strand. There was a story that drew itself to his mind. Something his father would tell him.

_There was a man who didn't do a single good deed in his life except for saving the life of a spider. When he was sent to hell, he climbed the spider's thread, but it broke. And he fell back to hell._

_Do you know what that man's name was?_

_It was Hisoka._

__

The spider kept destroying its web and winding the spindles into a ball. It scuttled up the bedpost with its precious bundle. Slowly, the white tangle of web was consumed. Hisoka shivered, the insect was now on top of the bed, crawling closer and close to him. He took his hand and smashed the spider then withdrew immediately fearing a bite.

The creature's thin legs twitched, the last motion it would ever live.

"But Kurosaki-san doesn't deserve this," the little girl said angrily.

"Then maybe you do."

Shaking, the little girl spat out, "You're mean Akito. I don't want to be your friend anymore. You never care about me, you're the worst brother ever." Her lips quivered. Stubbornly, she pushed her brother aside roughly and walked to the bed where she sat down and drew up her knees to her face trying to suppress tears threatening to overflow. She had cried too much that day—so much her eyes seemed to run dry.

The boy stared. There wasn't anything he could think of to do.

Hisoka stood up from his corner of the furniture crowded room and walked toward the girl but stopped in mid stride and headed toward the room's exit instead—he's had quite enough of this. The boy quickly dashed to the door and spread his arms out, obstructing the path out. Hisoka stared down at the boy.

Akito could feel the green eyes digging inside of him but kept his ground. He wasn't going to give up just yet. In his world he was invincible. He could stand up to immortal beings. He was grown up and wasn't going to be denied by some shinigami.

"Are you going to let me out?"

"No."

"There isn't a point to this, my partner is a shinigami too, and it doesn't take two to take a soul away."

"Don't you mean kill people?"

The harsh words made Hisoka stop cold. He could only focus on one thing, defending Tsuzuki.

"My partner doesn't kill people." Hisoka grabbed the boy's wrists and easily pulled him out of the way.

Akito ran up from behind determined to do anything. He wasn't fast enough—Hisoka caught his small fist as it went up. The little boy was burning with anger; he was going get this stupid shinigami, somehow.

"I don't want to hurt you, so please stop."

"You're just a stupid bully! You're not a god! You kill people. You're the ones who make people sad. I hate you. I hate you all!" he screamed at the top of his lungs.

Yumiko stood up alarmed at what she heard and rushed quickly to see what the trouble was. Upon seeing his mother still alive and well, the boy ran to her side and hugged her tightly.

"Okaasan! You have to run! They're going to kill you!"

Yumiko looked at her son strangely. "Akito, don't make up stuff. They're guests and how should you treat guests?"

"They're not guests! They're shinigami! And they're going to take you away!"

"Akito!" she scolded, "Stop with this nonsense."

Behind her, Tsuzuki stood with his hand rubbing his temple. He glanced at the clock on the wall, "It's actually pretty late, I think we should go. There are obviously some problems you have to work out yourself."

Yumiko turned around. "What is this really about?"

"They're shinigami! I swear!"

"Kazaki-san, your son is right. You were supposed to die last Wednesday, but your children have caused this trouble and we have to make things right," Hisoka said calmly.

Akito hugged his mother's waist tighter in the event she disappeared right then.

The mother looked back and forth from Hisoka to Tsuzuki unable to comprehend. She shook her head. "No...I can't. Who's going to take care of them? Can't you think of the children?"

"I'm afraid I can't do that. We all have to do what is required of us."

Hisoka could tell the woman was frightened beyond conception. But a movie never rolls its credits without an ending. It was all in the script anyway.

"Come on, it has to be done Tsuzuki."

"No. No please. Please, for them, not for me."

"We only ask you to do the right thing Kazaki-san," Hisoka said plainly.

Tsuzuki reached out his hand to the woman and she placed her shaking one in his knowing her fate was now signed. Akito forcefully jerked his mother back, but it was already too late.

"Okaasan..."

Hisoka heard the broken voice of the little girl standing in the doorway behind him. She'd come out of the room only to witness the worst possible sight she could ever see. When he turned to look at her, he saw a most betrayed expression staring back at him.

The boy screamed, a horrifying sound.

"You won't get away! I'm going to kill you just like you killed her!"

Sometimes it was just easier to walk away.

- - -

They slipped out, leaving the children alone with the body of their beloved mother, a corpse that would be cold soon. Outside, Tsuzuki looked intently at his shoes. The guilt radiated from him. The boy shinigami pulled at his partner's arm.

"You don't look too well."

Tsuzuki pulled up a forced smile and patted his partner's head, "Nah, I'm fine, it's you I'm worrying about. You look terrible. Is anything I can do?"

"No, I don't think there's anything anyone can do," he stopped; his thoughts seemed to be voicing themselves without his control.

"What happened back there Hisoka? You seem so different than when you walked in."

They stared at each other for a few moments and a mutual understanding passed between them. Hisoka looked down at the concrete, yellow in the lamplight. He almost said "I don't know" but thought better of it.

"Nothing happened. Idiot. Come on, let's go home."

The pair walked in the stillness wordlessly, empty light casting long shadows behind them on the vacant streets.

_You won't get away. I'm going to kill you just like you killed her._

The little words just wouldn't go away, but he still buried the thought as deep as he could.

The alarm clock beeped and Hisoka woke up. It was simply another ordinary day. But today, Hisoka woke up with the understanding that he really hadn't missed that much of life. The day you die was be the day you found no happiness left to search for, and he even though he'd lost sight of it, there was still had plenty of that.

The pale shadows still glared at him like before, but he knew better than to listen to them. There were still unresolved issues he had to deal with, of course. The strange blankness inside of him, the agony, the apathy...

But today he was determined to begin living again.

"Hisoka, would you like to eat out somewhere today?"

His green eyes looked up at his partner, considering the options. There was bound to be whining, public humiliation, and plenty of sweets involved, all of which he wanted to avoid like the plague. Yet in the end, some things could never be solved, and so the show must go on.

"Sure. Why not."

- - -

**end**

For those that stuck it through and read this from the beginning, I can't say how much I appreciate it. It's been really hard for me to write since I've never really been into writing much. In a lot of ways, this was my first fic...and will be my last.

The ending wasn't very satisfactory to me, but the entire story is meant to let the reader make up some of it and the ending should be no different. I hope it serves some justice. There are layers of stupid themes and symbolism I really don't care to explain. If you get it, you get it, if you don't...your loss I guess.


End file.
